Tube strike looming

I think this nicely sums up the benefit of having properly staffed LU stations:
(taken from the Workers Liberty blog)
www.workersliberty.org/blogs/tubeworker/2008/02/17/drivers-need-station-staff
Drivers Need Station Staff!

Casualisation and de-staffing

In a recent one-under at West Finchley, the driver was understandably too traumatised to do anything. On his own, the station supervisor evacuated the train and the station, got the current switched off, checked the site, dealt with the emergency services, put SCDs down.

He was on his own for half an hour while the DSM was struck in traffic during rush hour. How would any of this have happened if the supervisor had been 'mobile' and at the wrong station at the time? It also shows the support that station staff give to drivers when incidents occur.

In contrast, recently at Burnt Oak there was a fight on a train but no staff on the station. The only option was for the controller to ask the the train in the opposite direction to stop and help the driver so at least he was not on his own in a potentially dangerous situation!

This is not good enough. As well as causing huge disruption to the service, it is not safe as drivers lose radio communication when the train shuts down. Is this really the danger management want our staff to face?

I didn't mention Heathrow T5!

You know in all my years at LT/LU I never understood the NUR/RMT calling for strike action. Strikes cost members money that is lost forever, the loss can be compensated by overtime but it cannot be reclaimed. I was in the NUR RMT for 28 years and for many of those years I did not agree with the tactics that alienated the public from the workforce and cost me money.
In my opinion the right way to settle some of the issues that have arisen over the years would've achieved the presumably desired levels of chaos to the travelling public in a way which would have kept the public on side. Why is it I wonder that I have never heard it mentioned by the reps ?
What am I referring to? Quiite simply the tactic that would keep the workforce on duty earning their wages whilst leaving the management and board to explain why the service was severely disrupted throughout traffic hours on all lines.
The tactic is of course the 'work to rule' which as any experienced employee will understand would achieve the desired effect because the railway is unworkable when everyone follows all the prevailing rules and regulations to the letter. It was suggested to me on more than one occasion by several reps through the years that working to rule was out of the question because most employees "don't know the rules"! I think this was a great disservice to the vast majority of employees who had to know chapter and verse in order to run a reliable and efficient service despite the rule book and achieved it without applying the strictest and most correct interpretations which would've shot the service to pieces on a daily basis. Today the opportunity to cause major disruption simply by complying with all the prevailing rules using strict interpretation must be far greater with all the attention to H&S over the last two decades.
Of course it is inconvenient to work to rule, punctuality to the second is a must and there is no room at all for slackness, taking a breather, or doping off for a couple of minutes and I suspect that this is what the concerns of those reps in bygone years were because strictly interpreting the rules would actually harm relationships amongst and between the minions and employees in the various echelons of the operating structure. Of course the greatest such divide would probably be between the lowest levels of management, often traditionally RMT members, with either their masters or their subordinates as they truly are between a rock and a hard place. A situation that has perhaps always existed but never so much as today where the RMT are seen as militants and TSSA are simply full of hot air!

I really don't think a strike is the answer!

As someone mentioned above, if we let them use non-LUL staff in one location (and i'm not talking about traditionally NR stations here), it will open the floodgates for further cuts and casualisation until we are working in a qualified staff-free environment like on Network Rail. Heathrow T5 will only be the thin end of a very long and unpleasant wedge.

It is my view that when LUL took over the top of the Bakerloo and Richmond branch they did so not out of any kind-heartedness to the people who use those stations, nor the staff or drivers who go through them. They did it to bring sub-standard, cut-price railway practises onto LUL so they can drag the rest of us down to the disgraceful level of service and employment in place at those locations.

I totally agree with Railtechnician with regards to a "work to rule" rather than a strike, perhaps that's something we can all take to our respective union branch meetings and get it on the agenda at their head offices. Although in a situation like this, the one thing we can't do is sit back and do nothing. If we do, then before we know it we'll have nothing left.

When I joined LUL I was proud to work there. I especially sought employment with LUL because it was renowned for being a decent employer. I thought they were one of the few transport providers that actually cared about their staff and passengers and had high levels of safety. Every day I come into work now I see more and more attacks on all aspects of it and I certainly don't have any pride in working for LUL anymore (I have pride in my job however, but that's completely different).

Before long - unless we have a massive turnout on these strikes - those of us who haven't had our jobs done away with already will find ourselves booking on for duty in a much more unpleasant and unsafe place of work.

I have read both sides of the argument on the internal intranet - and quite frankly, I dunno what's true and what isn't!

I do know one thing though, the T5 stuff is absolutely irrelevant. T5 is owned by BAA - it's BAA's station and it's entirely their choice as to who staff's it. Yes, they've invited LUL to connect the Picc to it, and run trains to it - but that's about it. So on the T5 argument, I really am starting to get rather fed up with RMT & TSSA constantly bleeting on about it and misleading their members......

And that's half the problem really, I don't doubt there is an element of pushing their luck coming from management - that's their job really - but I really do wonder just how much of a case the unions actually have.

LUL have only had the ex Silverlink stations for just about 3 months..........the temporary staff were planned to last for six months, possibly longer if LUL got their sums wrong on time taken to get everyone trained - to be fair here, any project needs a back up plan. Anyway, point is, the Unions have put a case forward based on what they assume may be the managements position in the future......ermm hello, the planned six months hasn't arrived yet, let alone any extension of the arrangements.

In my view (and I'm sure many of you will disagree, but I'm saying it anyway), the Unions are treading a dangerous path by putting out misleading information to further their cause - by continuing with the T5 thing, for example, they are going to look very silly when the penny finally drops......